Rotgod chronology: 2023

I spent most of 2023 waiting for "Sonic degeneracy" to come out: it's typical for small underground labels to struggle financially, needing more time to release a record than initially planned - and the only thing you can do in that kind of situation is waiting.

However, I didn't just sit on my ass doing nothing: drum recordings for the new EPs kept going, and I also brought in the relentless Ciccio Paladino from Consumer, Nerobove and One Day in Fukushima (already featured on "Sonic degeneracy") and, most notably, war machine Giancarlo Tuccio from blackened crust band Sehnsucht from Catania, who recorded drums for various new songs and cover songs alike. A collab with him was planned already at the time of "Sonic degeneracy", but for a series of reasons it didn't work out back then. Well - better late than never, as always!

Recordings for other instruments began around summer, and early tracks started being completed. This time around, the recording process for guitars and bass changed completely: after the problems faced with mixing "Sonic degeneracy" (especially guitars), I decided to switch to the much more manageable option of direct input HD recording from the comfort of my own bedroom - while never renouncing to the raw, sawing, organic sound that's always been part of Rotgod's style.

Plus, before "Sonic degeneracy" came out, I managed to self-release some physical editions of previous digital releases of mine. After a successful split tape between The Ineffable and Lutto, I printed an extremely limited CD edition for "Jesus Christ pornostar" (only 25 copies at the time, but very elegant-looking ones), which I managed to release on april 17, exactly one year after the original release in digital format. The CD was warmly received, and went sold out in little time.

Meanwhile, during the earlier months of the year, I had already started gathering new riffs and ideas, both for new side-projects and a sophomore Rotgod full-length album (talk about planning in advance, even before the first one has come out!).

So, over the course of summertime, I kept writing lots of material for new projects (such as Foetophile) and also started putting together some brand new Rotgod songs - with a renewed, more ambitious songwriting approach (though still raw and primitive as fuck!) fueled by recent experiences with all these new side-projects in the works.

After a one-year long wait, on october 31, the "Sonic degeneracy" CD was finally unleashed on a run of 100 copies, preceded by a lyric video for "The serpent's speech" that gained quite a bit of traction on social media right from the get-go. The record was also released on Spotify and other streaming platforms, was hosted on important promotional YouTube channels such as New Wave of Old School Thrash Metal, Grindwar Channel/Records and even Greg Biehl's (ex-Nunslaughter) legendary channel No Gleaming Light, and it immediately gained quite some buzz and enthusiasm especially from younger italian audiences.

Online feedbacks were predictably polarized, with some praising the high "old school rawness" factor and some on the other hand being unable to stand the lo-fi recording quality. Curious was also the amount of different genre tags being attached to the record by different audiences, proving the unorthodoxy of Rotgod's approach within today's context of rigidly compartmentalized metal subgenres as opposed to the boundless cauldron of 80's underground sonic extremism I've always been inspired by.

While I was in Palermo to visit Krost von Barbarie and pick up a bunch of album copies, we also did a new collab: this time around, he recorded bass and some additional vocals for the Napalm Death / Cripple Bastards covers planned for "Polemics and obscenity".

Still not content after the album's release, I decided to ruin Christmas for everyone by releasing yet another extended single on december 24, "Hipster holocaust", announced by a totally absurd Shrek-themed teaser and accompanied by a lyric video for the track "Kill your hipster neighbor", already featured on the "Sonic degeneracy" CD. All these elements put together favored yet again a warm reaction from the audience.

And on the brink of the new year, to close things off nicely, the "Sybaritic metal" videoclip reached 2000 views - and to celebrate the event, I posted an extended "making of" YouTube video, perhaps even more insane and hilarious than the original video itself.

2022 • Index • 2024

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